10 Things You Might Not Know About Poverty

[Cigar]

1) Johnson's programs were never intended to end poverty all by themselves. They were supposed to accelerate and reinvigorate a process of poverty reduction that was already under way in post-WWII America—as was clearly laid out in the 1964 Economic Report of the President, one of the two key documents defining the original scope of the War on Poverty, along with Johnson's 1964 State of the Union.


2) The US economy has failed to keep reducing poverty as it did before 1964. After a few good years, the economy weakened substantially after 1973, undercutting the progress LBJ and his advisers had counted on. GDP grew 4.0 percent per year from 1948 through 1973, but only grew 2.7 percent annually from 1973 through 2011. The average annual unemployment rate from 1948 to 1973 was 4.8 percent, but since then it's been 6.5 percent, roughly 40 percent higher. That labor market weakness, combined with all-out attacks on labor unions, and a declining minimum wage, has significantly undercut the ability of tens of millions of Americans to raise themselves out of poverty simply by working an 8-hour day.


3) Safety net programs have cut poverty by 40 percent since the 1960s. Along with social insurance programs like Medicare, and Social Security expansions—also associated with the War on Poverty—means-tested programs targeting the poor have dramatically reduced the rate of poverty in America since LBJ's presidency. For decades, the official poverty measure (OPM), based on cash income, has provided a crude and in many ways misleading measure of poverty, one that is particularly ill-suited to measuring the effectiveness of anti-poverty programs.


4) The War on Poverty wasn't just means-tested programs for the poor.


When I asked Bailey to group the programs into larger categories, she responded: “Here are four (not mutually exclusive) categories. Lots of programs cut across the categories:

Macroeconomic and structural change: 1964 tax cut, minimum wage, worker training and development, Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, Housing and Urban Development
Human capital development: Elementary and Secondary Education Act, Higher Education Act, Head Start, Civil Rights Act
Social insurance: Social Security, Medicare

Safety net: food stamps, AFDC, Medicaid, Older Americans Act.”

5) Medicare has dramatically cut elder poverty, while providing broader family security. In the pre-Medicare era, 65+ poverty rates were 35 percent, today, they're less than 10. Both Medicare and Social Security expansion contributed a lot, although the poor weren't specifically targeted. As Bailey and Danziger explain:


The War on Poverty was more than a disparate set of programs. One of its unifying elements was prevention of economic hardship. An example is Medicare. Although Medicare is targeted to all of the elderly, not just the elderly poor,6 Johnson stressed its capacity to prevent poverty. His 1964 State of the Union noted the need to “provide hospital insurance for our older citizens... to protect him in his old age... against the devastating hardship of prolonged or repeated illness.” Johnson went on to say that “every American will benefit by the extension of social security to cover the hospital costs of their aged parents.” That is, Medicare not only prevented financial ruin among the elderly—it also protected their adult children from having to pay for the costs of their parents’ illness.”


6) Poor children have benefited from multiple programs, working together.

From improved prenatal health onward, poor children benefit from the cumulative effects of multiple programs as they grow older. Bailey cited four major ways this occurs:



Early childhood investments in preschool or education can have large returns—they complement other investments
Large beneficiaries of safety net programs are children—these are another way of improving early childhood environments.
Federal dollars for public schools increase educational opportunities for poor kids
Tuition subsidies for college students increase labor market skills of the next generation


7) The War on Poverty played a major role in desegregating America.

Perhaps the most significant synergy involved with the War on Poverty is the role it played in desegregating America. This resulted from intentionally implemented synergies among the programs along with synergies with civil rights legislation and court rulings. In their book, Bailey and Danziger write:


“Less well known is that the War on Poverty is intertwined with the 1964 Civil Rights Act (CRA). The War on Poverty’s “assault on discrimination” (Council of Economic Advisers 1964) leveraged federal funds to push for desegregation. Iconic depictions of forced desegregation and heroic narratives of activism shape the collective memory of the 1960s. A less-remembered aspect of the War on Poverty is the Johnson administration’s decision to withhold federal money in cases where local organizations failed to desegregate. The War on Poverty’s expansion of federal funding gave the Johnson administration the ability to apply pressure to local governments and private organizations to reduce racial discrimination and segregation, making compliance with the CRA a pocketbook issue.”

8) Economic deterioration has caused more poverty than family breakdown, which conservatives blame on the War on Poverty.

A paper by Sheldon Danziger and Peter Gottshalk, "Diverging Fortunes: Trends in Poverty and Inequality," used demographic and economic information to separate out the impacts of demographic changes and changes to the economy as whole from 1975 to 2002. In the first case, they created a simulation which assumed that family income adjusted for family size doubled between 1975 and 2002, just as it had between 1949 and 1969, rather than increasing by just 53 percent, as it actually did. Second, they assumed that income inequality remained constant at the 1975 level. This was, in effect, the picture of the economic future as Johnson's advisers and early poverty researchers expected it to be. This simulation produces a 2002 poverty rate 5.2 points below the actual poverty rate. In contrast, a second simulation, examining the impacts of changes in family structure found that they only accounted for a 1.2 percentage point increase in poverty over this same period—less than a quarter as much.

9) Cumulative impacts produced added benefits—but costs as well.

Because multiple programs impact many of the same people, it's extremely difficult to measure their impacts in combination, Bailey noted. “Evaluating the impact of the entirety of the war on poverty including the interactions of the individual programs is challenging to say the least,” she said. “To my knowledge, no one has really been able to do that. Most evaluations examine the independent effects of one program taking the others as given.”

10) The War On Poverty is both partisan/ideological and bipartisan/pragmatic.

Bailey and Danziger's focus on the War on Poverty as defined by LBJ and his economic advisers in January, 1964, tends to give it a partisan, ideological flavor, whether they intend it to or not. This is an inescapable result of how conservatives since the time of Reagan have responded.


But there is another way to see it, as described by Shawn Fremstad (http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/cepr-blog/what-was-is-the-war-on-poverty-anyway-and-does-it-matter-today), a senior research associate at the Center for Economic Policy Research. Fremstad takes a more expansive view of the legislation that ought to be included, extending as far forward as 1977:


"It was legislation adopted during the Nixon administration (particularly in 1971 and 1973) that made food stamps a truly national program with uniform eligibility standards and availability nationwide. By October 1974, about 7 percent of Americans were receiving benefits. And it was the Food Stamp Act of 1977, which owes its existence in large part to the bipartisan efforts of Senator Bob Dole and George McGovern that established the modern program we have today.


http://www.alternet.org/economy/10-things-you-might-not-know-about-poverty?page=0%2C4

... and now for the denials

[zelmo1234]

#11 Poverty under Obama policies is higher than when the war on poverty started

[Cigar]

#11 Poverty under Obama policies is higher than when the war on poverty started

The GOP Plan is working :laugh:

[zelmo1234]

The GOP Plan is working :laugh:

The economic plan of higher spending, higher taxes and stimulus??? That is the Bamsters plan

[Peter1469]

This assume this is true:


3) Safety net programs have cut poverty by 40 percent since the 1960s.

So why does the left not include the federal benefit programs when they calculate income inequality today? :rollseyes:

[hanger4]

This assume this is true:So why does the left not include the federal benefit programs when they calculate income inequality today? :rollseyes:Come on peter, then they couldn't have it both ways which destroys their talking points.

[Chris]

"1) Johnson's programs were never intended to end poverty all by themselves."

No, like the War of Drugs and the War on Terrorism, it was intended to only increase the power of government to meddle in our lives.

[Cigar]

This assume this is true:



So why does the left not include the federal benefit programs when they calculate income inequality today? :rollseyes:

Because The War only lasted 6 years, The Republicans have been chipping away since the beginning.

Then they do what they always do, see ... look it's failing. :laugh:

[patrickt]

Most of the list were typical lies but one was so outrageous I had to comment:

"7) The War on Poverty played a major role in desegregating America.

Perhaps the most significant synergy involved with the War on Poverty is the role it played in desegregating America. This resulted from intentionally implemented synergies among the programs along with synergies with civil rights legislation and court rulings. In their book, Bailey and Danziger write:


“Less well known is that the War on Poverty is intertwined with the 1964 Civil Rights Act (CRA). The War on Poverty’s “assault on discrimination” (Council of Economic Advisers 1964) leveraged federal funds to push for desegregation. Iconic depictions of forced desegregation and heroic narratives of activism shape the collective memory of the 1960s. A less-remembered aspect of the War on Poverty is the Johnson administration’s decision to withhold federal money in cases where local organizations failed to desegregate. The War on Poverty’s expansion of federal funding gave the Johnson administration the ability to apply pressure to local governments and private organizations to reduce racial discrimination and segregation, making compliance with the CRA a pocketbook issue.”

In fact, the war on poverty helped the liberals resegregate America. Notice the racial integration in the housing projects? I didn't think so. Notice the racial integration in the welfare office? Not where I lived. Liberals intended, and were successful, in locking a whole group into intergenerational poverty. Welfare programs, union schools, and high unemployment for all Americans but especially for their target population. They should be ashamed but shame is not something liberals understand because shame requires a sense of responsibility.

It is amazing how Cigar has a macro so he can blame the GOP with s single-key stroke. It's not like he even has to think.

[Chris]

Because The War only lasted 6 years, The Republicans have been chipping away since the beginning.

Then they do what they always do, see ... look it's failing. :laugh:



Just one of many headlines: "War on Poverty at 50 -- despite trillions spent, poverty won".

[Cigar]

Just one of many headlines: "War on Poverty at 50 -- despite trillions spent, poverty won".

Yea ... like ObamaCare is failing ... in all The red States :laugh:

[Codename Section]

"1) Johnson's programs were never intended to end poverty all by themselves."

No, like the War of Drugs and the War on Terrorism, it was intended to only increase the power of government to meddle in our lives.

Yes. Make people slowly controlled and dependent.

[pragmatic]

Because The War only lasted 6 years, The Republicans have been chipping away since the beginning.

Then they do what they always do, see ... look it's failing. :laugh:

Read yesterday that prior to 1965 when Lyndon Johnson and crew declared the war on povery, 85% of blacks lived in 2 parent households.

Believe that number is now 11% of black children live in 2 parent households. Some correlate those numbers with the billions of dollars in social welfare programs that has been pumped into the system during that period.

Dunno. Your thoughts....??

[The Xl]

Read yesterday that prior to 1965 when Lyndon Johnson and crew declared the war on povery, 85% of blacks lived in 2 parent households.

Believe that number is now 11% of black children live in 2 parent households. Some correlate those numbers with the billions of dollars in social welfare programs that has been pumped into the system during that period.

Dunno. Your thoughts....??

Government put the black community in the state it is. It's not genetic, it's not racial, it's nothing of the sort. Blacks would have caught up to whites in regards to IQ and wealth if it wasn't for government.

The American government hasn't done blacks one fucking favor, ever. Not one.

[Codename Section]

Read yesterday that prior to 1965 when Lyndon Johnson and crew declared the war on povery, 85% of blacks lived in 2 parent households.

Believe that number is now 11% of black children live in 2 parent households. Some correlate those numbers with the billions of dollars in social welfare programs that has been pumped into the system during that period.

Dunno. Your thoughts....??

Wash, says because the welfare requirements said you couldn't receive aid in a two parent household.

[The Xl]

Wash, says because the welfare requirements said you couldn't receive aid in a two parent household.

All done on purpose, for sure.

[BB-35]

1) Johnson's programs were never intended to end poverty all by themselves. They were supposed to accelerate and reinvigorate a process of poverty reduction that was already under way in post-WWII America—as was clearly laid out in the 1964 Economic Report of the President, one of the two key documents defining the original scope of the War on Poverty, along with Johnson's 1964 State of the Union.


2) The US economy has failed to keep reducing poverty as it did before 1964. After a few good years, the economy weakened substantially after 1973, undercutting the progress LBJ and his advisers had counted on. GDP grew 4.0 percent per year from 1948 through 1973, but only grew 2.7 percent annually from 1973 through 2011. The average annual unemployment rate from 1948 to 1973 was 4.8 percent, but since then it's been 6.5 percent, roughly 40 percent higher. That labor market weakness, combined with all-out attacks on labor unions, and a declining minimum wage, has significantly undercut the ability of tens of millions of Americans to raise themselves out of poverty simply by working an 8-hour day.


3) Safety net programs have cut poverty by 40 percent since the 1960s. Along with social insurance programs like Medicare, and Social Security expansions—also associated with the War on Poverty—means-tested programs targeting the poor have dramatically reduced the rate of poverty in America since LBJ's presidency. For decades, the official poverty measure (OPM), based on cash income, has provided a crude and in many ways misleading measure of poverty, one that is particularly ill-suited to measuring the effectiveness of anti-poverty programs.


4) The War on Poverty wasn't just means-tested programs for the poor.


When I asked Bailey to group the programs into larger categories, she responded: “Here are four (not mutually exclusive) categories. Lots of programs cut across the categories:

Macroeconomic and structural change: 1964 tax cut, minimum wage, worker training and development, Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, Housing and Urban Development
Human capital development: Elementary and Secondary Education Act, Higher Education Act, Head Start, Civil Rights Act
Social insurance: Social Security, Medicare

Safety net: food stamps, AFDC, Medicaid, Older Americans Act.”

5) Medicare has dramatically cut elder poverty, while providing broader family security. In the pre-Medicare era, 65+ poverty rates were 35 percent, today, they're less than 10. Both Medicare and Social Security expansion contributed a lot, although the poor weren't specifically targeted. As Bailey and Danziger explain:


The War on Poverty was more than a disparate set of programs. One of its unifying elements was prevention of economic hardship. An example is Medicare. Although Medicare is targeted to all of the elderly, not just the elderly poor,6 Johnson stressed its capacity to prevent poverty. His 1964 State of the Union noted the need to “provide hospital insurance for our older citizens... to protect him in his old age... against the devastating hardship of prolonged or repeated illness.” Johnson went on to say that “every American will benefit by the extension of social security to cover the hospital costs of their aged parents.” That is, Medicare not only prevented financial ruin among the elderly—it also protected their adult children from having to pay for the costs of their parents’ illness.”


6) Poor children have benefited from multiple programs, working together.

From improved prenatal health onward, poor children benefit from the cumulative effects of multiple programs as they grow older. Bailey cited four major ways this occurs:



Early childhood investments in preschool or education can have large returns—they complement other investments
Large beneficiaries of safety net programs are children—these are another way of improving early childhood environments.
Federal dollars for public schools increase educational opportunities for poor kids
Tuition subsidies for college students increase labor market skills of the next generation

7) The War on Poverty played a major role in desegregating America.

Perhaps the most significant synergy involved with the War on Poverty is the role it played in desegregating America. This resulted from intentionally implemented synergies among the programs along with synergies with civil rights legislation and court rulings. In their book, Bailey and Danziger write:


“Less well known is that the War on Poverty is intertwined with the 1964 Civil Rights Act (CRA). The War on Poverty’s “assault on discrimination” (Council of Economic Advisers 1964) leveraged federal funds to push for desegregation. Iconic depictions of forced desegregation and heroic narratives of activism shape the collective memory of the 1960s. A less-remembered aspect of the War on Poverty is the Johnson administration’s decision to withhold federal money in cases where local organizations failed to desegregate. The War on Poverty’s expansion of federal funding gave the Johnson administration the ability to apply pressure to local governments and private organizations to reduce racial discrimination and segregation, making compliance with the CRA a pocketbook issue.”

8) Economic deterioration has caused more poverty than family breakdown, which conservatives blame on the War on Poverty.

A paper by Sheldon Danziger and Peter Gottshalk, "Diverging Fortunes: Trends in Poverty and Inequality," used demographic and economic information to separate out the impacts of demographic changes and changes to the economy as whole from 1975 to 2002. In the first case, they created a simulation which assumed that family income adjusted for family size doubled between 1975 and 2002, just as it had between 1949 and 1969, rather than increasing by just 53 percent, as it actually did. Second, they assumed that income inequality remained constant at the 1975 level. This was, in effect, the picture of the economic future as Johnson's advisers and early poverty researchers expected it to be. This simulation produces a 2002 poverty rate 5.2 points below the actual poverty rate. In contrast, a second simulation, examining the impacts of changes in family structure found that they only accounted for a 1.2 percentage point increase in poverty over this same period—less than a quarter as much.

9) Cumulative impacts produced added benefits—but costs as well.

Because multiple programs impact many of the same people, it's extremely difficult to measure their impacts in combination, Bailey noted. “Evaluating the impact of the entirety of the war on poverty including the interactions of the individual programs is challenging to say the least,” she said. “To my knowledge, no one has really been able to do that. Most evaluations examine the independent effects of one program taking the others as given.”

10) The War On Poverty is both partisan/ideological and bipartisan/pragmatic.

Bailey and Danziger's focus on the War on Poverty as defined by LBJ and his economic advisers in January, 1964, tends to give it a partisan, ideological flavor, whether they intend it to or not. This is an inescapable result of how conservatives since the time of Reagan have responded.


But there is another way to see it, as described by Shawn Fremstad (http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/cepr-blog/what-was-is-the-war-on-poverty-anyway-and-does-it-matter-today), a senior research associate at the Center for Economic Policy Research. Fremstad takes a more expansive view of the legislation that ought to be included, extending as far forward as 1977:


"It was legislation adopted during the Nixon administration (particularly in 1971 and 1973) that made food stamps a truly national program with uniform eligibility standards and availability nationwide. By October 1974, about 7 percent of Americans were receiving benefits. And it was the Food Stamp Act of 1977, which owes its existence in large part to the bipartisan efforts of Senator Bob Dole and George McGovern that established the modern program we have today.


http://www.alternet.org/economy/10-things-you-might-not-know-about-poverty?page=0%2C4

... and now for the denials

Excuses,excuses

[jillian]

Excuses,excuses

typical non-response.

i don't see any excuses there. i see reality. but i know... the right is allergic to reality.

[BB-35]

typical non-response.

i don't see any excuses there. i see reality. but i know... the right is allergic to reality.

'reality' is they are excuses,which in reality,are what the right is more allergic to

[lynn]

When you do not have enough jobs to employ the entire population between the ages of 18 -64 years of age, you will have people living in poverty. When you price college tuition so high that it is nearly impossible to attain a college education, you are going to have people living in poverty.

People do not choose to live in poverty, society as a whole keeps them there.

[donttread]

Poverty, terror, drugs. Once we declare war on you, you will proliferate incredibly quickly




1) Johnson's programs were never intended to end poverty all by themselves. They were supposed to accelerate and reinvigorate a process of poverty reduction that was already under way in post-WWII America—as was clearly laid out in the 1964 Economic Report of the President, one of the two key documents defining the original scope of the War on Poverty, along with Johnson's 1964 State of the Union.


2) The US economy has failed to keep reducing poverty as it did before 1964. After a few good years, the economy weakened substantially after 1973, undercutting the progress LBJ and his advisers had counted on. GDP grew 4.0 percent per year from 1948 through 1973, but only grew 2.7 percent annually from 1973 through 2011. The average annual unemployment rate from 1948 to 1973 was 4.8 percent, but since then it's been 6.5 percent, roughly 40 percent higher. That labor market weakness, combined with all-out attacks on labor unions, and a declining minimum wage, has significantly undercut the ability of tens of millions of Americans to raise themselves out of poverty simply by working an 8-hour day.


3) Safety net programs have cut poverty by 40 percent since the 1960s. Along with social insurance programs like Medicare, and Social Security expansions—also associated with the War on Poverty—means-tested programs targeting the poor have dramatically reduced the rate of poverty in America since LBJ's presidency. For decades, the official poverty measure (OPM), based on cash income, has provided a crude and in many ways misleading measure of poverty, one that is particularly ill-suited to measuring the effectiveness of anti-poverty programs.


4) The War on Poverty wasn't just means-tested programs for the poor.


When I asked Bailey to group the programs into larger categories, she responded: “Here are four (not mutually exclusive) categories. Lots of programs cut across the categories:

Macroeconomic and structural change: 1964 tax cut, minimum wage, worker training and development, Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, Housing and Urban Development
Human capital development: Elementary and Secondary Education Act, Higher Education Act, Head Start, Civil Rights Act
Social insurance: Social Security, Medicare

Safety net: food stamps, AFDC, Medicaid, Older Americans Act.”

5) Medicare has dramatically cut elder poverty, while providing broader family security. In the pre-Medicare era, 65+ poverty rates were 35 percent, today, they're less than 10. Both Medicare and Social Security expansion contributed a lot, although the poor weren't specifically targeted. As Bailey and Danziger explain:


The War on Poverty was more than a disparate set of programs. One of its unifying elements was prevention of economic hardship. An example is Medicare. Although Medicare is targeted to all of the elderly, not just the elderly poor,6 Johnson stressed its capacity to prevent poverty. His 1964 State of the Union noted the need to “provide hospital insurance for our older citizens... to protect him in his old age... against the devastating hardship of prolonged or repeated illness.” Johnson went on to say that “every American will benefit by the extension of social security to cover the hospital costs of their aged parents.” That is, Medicare not only prevented financial ruin among the elderly—it also protected their adult children from having to pay for the costs of their parents’ illness.”


6) Poor children have benefited from multiple programs, working together.

From improved prenatal health onward, poor children benefit from the cumulative effects of multiple programs as they grow older. Bailey cited four major ways this occurs:



Early childhood investments in preschool or education can have large returns—they complement other investments
Large beneficiaries of safety net programs are children—these are another way of improving early childhood environments.
Federal dollars for public schools increase educational opportunities for poor kids
Tuition subsidies for college students increase labor market skills of the next generation

7) The War on Poverty played a major role in desegregating America.

Perhaps the most significant synergy involved with the War on Poverty is the role it played in desegregating America. This resulted from intentionally implemented synergies among the programs along with synergies with civil rights legislation and court rulings. In their book, Bailey and Danziger write:


“Less well known is that the War on Poverty is intertwined with the 1964 Civil Rights Act (CRA). The War on Poverty’s “assault on discrimination” (Council of Economic Advisers 1964) leveraged federal funds to push for desegregation. Iconic depictions of forced desegregation and heroic narratives of activism shape the collective memory of the 1960s. A less-remembered aspect of the War on Poverty is the Johnson administration’s decision to withhold federal money in cases where local organizations failed to desegregate. The War on Poverty’s expansion of federal funding gave the Johnson administration the ability to apply pressure to local governments and private organizations to reduce racial discrimination and segregation, making compliance with the CRA a pocketbook issue.”

8) Economic deterioration has caused more poverty than family breakdown, which conservatives blame on the War on Poverty.

A paper by Sheldon Danziger and Peter Gottshalk, "Diverging Fortunes: Trends in Poverty and Inequality," used demographic and economic information to separate out the impacts of demographic changes and changes to the economy as whole from 1975 to 2002. In the first case, they created a simulation which assumed that family income adjusted for family size doubled between 1975 and 2002, just as it had between 1949 and 1969, rather than increasing by just 53 percent, as it actually did. Second, they assumed that income inequality remained constant at the 1975 level. This was, in effect, the picture of the economic future as Johnson's advisers and early poverty researchers expected it to be. This simulation produces a 2002 poverty rate 5.2 points below the actual poverty rate. In contrast, a second simulation, examining the impacts of changes in family structure found that they only accounted for a 1.2 percentage point increase in poverty over this same period—less than a quarter as much.

9) Cumulative impacts produced added benefits—but costs as well.

Because multiple programs impact many of the same people, it's extremely difficult to measure their impacts in combination, Bailey noted. “Evaluating the impact of the entirety of the war on poverty including the interactions of the individual programs is challenging to say the least,” she said. “To my knowledge, no one has really been able to do that. Most evaluations examine the independent effects of one program taking the others as given.”

10) The War On Poverty is both partisan/ideological and bipartisan/pragmatic.

Bailey and Danziger's focus on the War on Poverty as defined by LBJ and his economic advisers in January, 1964, tends to give it a partisan, ideological flavor, whether they intend it to or not. This is an inescapable result of how conservatives since the time of Reagan have responded.


But there is another way to see it, as described by Shawn Fremstad (http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/cepr-blog/what-was-is-the-war-on-poverty-anyway-and-does-it-matter-today), a senior research associate at the Center for Economic Policy Research. Fremstad takes a more expansive view of the legislation that ought to be included, extending as far forward as 1977:


"It was legislation adopted during the Nixon administration (particularly in 1971 and 1973) that made food stamps a truly national program with uniform eligibility standards and availability nationwide. By October 1974, about 7 percent of Americans were receiving benefits. And it was the Food Stamp Act of 1977, which owes its existence in large part to the bipartisan efforts of Senator Bob Dole and George McGovern that established the modern program we have today.


http://www.alternet.org/economy/10-things-you-might-not-know-about-poverty?page=0%2C4

... and now for the denials

[jillian]

Poverty, terror, drugs. Once we declare war on you, you will proliferate incredibly quickly

well, you can't declare war on a tactic.

and even jesus said there would be poor always. that does not mean we shouldn't try to alleviate awful situations as best we can.

as for drugs... well, was there ever a time when people didn't want to self-medicate whether for religious reasons, personal reasons or whatever...

perhaps the problem is in calling efforts to deal with things "wars".

[Chris]

War is a meme that tends to evoke emotionalism and patriotism.